


A Harsh Rough Man

by canis_m



Category: No. 6 - Asano Atsuko
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-10
Updated: 2011-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-24 10:16:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/262356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canis_m/pseuds/canis_m
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A night that never happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Harsh Rough Man

**Author's Note:**

> With apologies to John Donne.

"Sleeping with Norton?"

The voice was close at first, low enough over him to stir the hairs on his head. Then it receded to a cool authoritative height.

"If you wanted the sonnets there are two editions."

Shion had time to feel that the pillow under his cheek was oddly flat and stiff before it was wrenched away, mashing his face as it vanished. He came awake, more startled by the fact of his sleeping than its disruption. He hadn't meant to fall asleep at all, not so early, not before Nezumi got home. He blinked in the dimness at the anthology cocked in Nezumi's hand.

"Oh," he said, vague with sleep. "I thought there must be. But I couldn't find them." The stacks were a maze only Nezumi knew the way through. If the books were in any kind of order, it was a hidden one. You could grope among the heaps for hours without laying a finger on what you thought you wanted, and end up face-down in something unlooked for. But Shion had no quarrel with that.

"Three Complete Shakespeares. And a translation into French." Nezumi glanced at the Norton. His face was shadowed with the lamp behind him, but Shion thought his mouth twisted. "You toddler, you fucking _drooled_ on it."

"I--what?"

"Or is this some other kind of spot, hmm?" Nezumi shoved the open page in front of Shion's nose. A circular blotch discolored half of Sonnet 30 and most of the margin. Shion flushed like a child caught wetting the bed.

"Sorry, I--" The anthology fell with a shambling sound as Nezumi dropped it. The _Hamlet_ by the pillow followed, and the _Symposium._ Shion watched them tumble in confusion. "Aren't you going to read?" he asked, as Nezumi slung himself down and his legs up over the blanket.

"What I feel like reading isn't in there," Nezumi said.

Shion didn't know what to call what happened after that. It wasn't what Safu had once asked of him, not as he understood the idea. His pulse beat on his eardrum hard enough to hurt, but nothing drubbed out Nezumi's voice, his breath, the sound and shape of the words in Shion's ear if not the sense of them. The moving syllables opened him up. He clutched the limp edge of the pillow, huddling to fit the warmth behind him as Nezumi's fist burrowed into his shirt.

 _Why shouldst thou then admit the tillage of a harsh rough man?_ The lines were none that he recognized. Whatever meaning they had drained out of him like water from a gutter. He put his hand over Nezumi's hand, on Nezumi's wrist. _Men leave behind them that which their sin shows, and are as thieves traced, which rob when it snows. But of our dalliance no more signs there are, than fishes leave in streams, or birds in air._


End file.
